Introduction to Poetry

January marked the beginning of the poetry unit. Personally, I think the opening day went really well! I told my self-deprecating story of "The Red Wheelbarrow" and how at first I thought it was the stupidest poem ever written. I was fixated on the white chickens and what they meant to a red wheelbarrow. I finally sent it to an engineering friend as proof of the higher level of difficulty in humanities. Sadly, I did not prove my point because it took this friend approximately 3 seconds to come up with fabulous insight. It doesn't really match up to what the literary critics would say but it makes total sense. The point of story is that even the Great and Powerful Oz... umm, rather the fabulous literary teacher does not connect with every poem. Some poems will make them feel like they are standing naked in room because it's so close to their own emotions, some will have them asking "what's up the chickens?"

I also have them read "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins. It's an awesome poem about how poetry is treated in a lot of classes. As a college freshman, I constantly felt like poems were some sort of secret society. I didn't really understand what was being said and constantly got remarks like "go below the surface" on various papers. One day I met someone who was totally into poetry. Reading, writing - the whole nine yards. In listening to him speak about poetry, something just clicked and this whole world opened up! The Collins poem expresses that teacher student relationship when reading poetry and makes my expectation more clear than any learning objective would. Plus, they always crack up at the part about beating the poem with hose.